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Artist Statement:
Freelance photographer,
Raechel Marie Running, creates
images that are more than just
photographs. Her work is
rooted in the tradition of
documentary and portrait
photography and serves as a
foundation for her collage and
multimedia pieces that are as
diverse as her subjects and
interests. She photographs
friends and the people she
meets along the way, who pose
simply as themselves and
sometimes are transformed
through the creative nature of
the imagination into
archtypical images that
explore the pathos and skewed
beauty of the universal drama
and diversity of the human
soul.
Raechel continually draws
inspiration from the visual
influences of Impressionistic
painters , Chicano art and
other photographers and
writers whose work has
inspired her to walk the road
less traveled. With her camera
often serving as a passport,
she explores the multifaceted
world, recording her own
experiences and impressions
with pictures and scraps of
memorabilia to make an
eclectic record to serve as
reference for her art. She
combines hand painting and
Polaroid transfers with a
variety of mixed media to make
elaborately embellished
collages full of the vibrant
colors of her multicultural
heritage that pay homage to
Beauty.
Raechel, of Trinidadian and
American descent grew up in
the ...
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Artist Exhibitions:
EXHIBITIONS:
• Lasting Light : 125 years of
Grand Canyon Photography
Smithsonian traveling
exhibit
2008,2009
• Trappings of the American
West Museum of Northern
Arizona,Flagstaff
2008
• Festival De Paquime, , Casas
Grandes,Chihuahua,Mexico
2008
• Museum of Northern Cultures,
Casas Grandes,Chihuahua,Mexico
2008
• Flagstaff Photo Center,
Flagstaff,AZ LAGRIMAS DE LUZ
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Artist Galleries:
Flagstaff Photography Center
Flagstaff,AZ 928.774.2544
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Collections:
Westin Keirland Resort
Scottsdale AZ
Aspey, Watkins & Diesel
Attorneys at Law Flagstaff AZ
Coconino County Superior Court
House Flagstaff AZ
Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra
Flagstaff AZ
Northern AZ Book Festival
Flagstaff AZ...
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Commissions:
Westin Kierland Resorts,
Scottsdale AZ
Coconino County Superior Court
Chambers Flagstaff AZ
Aspey, Watkins, & Diesel ::
Attorneys at Law Flagstaff AZ
Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra
Flagstaff AZ...
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Reviews for Raechel Running:
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Breaking Down Borders: Artist Profile FLAGLIVE! OCT 2007
link:
http://www.flagstafflive.com/flagstafflive_story.cfm?storyID=160893&syr=2007
Like her love of the photographic image, Raechel Running’s latest exhibition at the Flagstaff Photography Center, “Lagrimas de Luz: Tears of Light” is the product of a lifelong accumulation of passions and ideas—and a healthy dose of happenstance. As Running tells it, her path to this solo exhibition on the history, landscape and people of Mexico began rather inauspiciously.
The fact that she is the daughter of well-known Flagstaff photographer John Running is mentioned almost as an afterthought, but she acknowledges that growing up surrounded by books, travel and culture were essential in awakening her curiosity about the world and the people in it. This inquisitiveness is reflected in many prints for “Lagrimas de Luz,” from a violin-playing figure evocatively silhouetted against a receding skyline, to a shot of Pancho Villa with a luminous tear shining against his leathered skin.
Running’s passion for her subjects is abundantly clear, though her tenure as an artist in residence at Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, Mexico, came about as a fortuitous coincidence. An artist colleague was offered an editorial assignment photographing well-known Mexican potter Juan Quezada: What she found upon her arrival in Mexico in February amazed her. Beyond the Mata Ortiz pottery movement, spearheaded by self-taught master Quezada, the artistic potential in the archaeological remains of ancient civilizations, agricultural richness and cultural history of Chihuahua convinced Running to stay beyond. Bones, brightly colored fabrics, a large cross-shaped wall hanging and music that is both upbeat and haunting helps to evoke the feel of what Running calls her “Mexican back yard” in the exhibit itself. Shrine-like works contain clippings, photos and fragments of cards in a tribute to the dualities of life and death embraced in Mexican culture. The frames surrounding many of Running’s photographs are window frames “scavenged,” as she says, from old Mexican buildings. They are things she lives with on a day-to-day basis, but they are also her inspiration.
Running’s work is not an overt commentary on current issues: she does not live in a border town, and therefore hasn’t examined the impact of border-crossings and the accompanying political and social issues in her work.
“There is a difference … a lot of people stateside are so influenced by our contemporary news and the media, and a lot of that news is so negative about the border, and the fear factor, and everything just based on fear,” she says. However, she hopes “Lagrimas de Luz” will aid in the dissolution of a more general border—the one that oftentimes separates people from each other. Running hopes that her exhibit can encourage a wider, more accepting worldview.
“You can start to erase the idea of borderlines and you open up to a broader image of how people coexisted and the heritage and the traditions that still exist. That part, I think, is really exciting and really important,” says Running.
Though she works as a freelance and commercial photographer as well, Running is primarily a portraitist. It shows in “Lagrimas de Luz”: her images of people, often printed on thick, heavy velour paper or enhanced with digitized overlays of swirling shapes or poetry, are infused with a rich sense of place. The bright skirt of a charreada girl is juxtaposed with the prancing hooves of her horse, for instance. Pictures of Juan Quezada contain no stereotypical posing of the artist with his pots, but explore Quezada’s love of geology and history. The potter is shown dwarfed by rocky outcroppings, or holding bleached bones up to a brilliant blue sky. A lifelong people-watcher, Running is drawn to “interesting faces,” but often, her portraits are formed as the result of a deeply felt need.
Working at her Mexican home, a rustic 19th century adobe called Casa Azul, that was once used as a hiding place from raiding Apaches and meeting chamber for the Mexican revolution, has allowed Running a new sense of freedom to experiment with new forms of photography. She has begun creating still lifes of local produce, oftentimes featuring the unbroken body of a dead bird, that possess a tactile, personal quality reminiscent of Frida Kahlo and other Chicano painters. She sees a simple, but elemental sensuality in these compositions; a poetry that is linked to the natural world, open to interpretation and common to us all.
“Sometimes I will photograph the work and eat it, or bury the bird,” she says. “Death causes you to pause to learn about living. It’s not making photographs about death, but pausing and celebrating life. It’s like creative play, looking for the lines of a poem, a visual poem.”
Running is inspired by the old world gentility, friendliness and sense of community she experiences as one of Casas Grandes approximately 4,000 residents. She shares stories of greeting visitors at her door who have come to sell everything from photographs to antique treasures to Mennonite cheese.
The “tears of light” referred to in the exhibit title certainly does not refer to tears of sorrow or regret, but of the anticipation of reconnection.
“I always feel so emotional about either returning, or leaving, or just certain things that I see and I always feel my own tears come,” says Running. “Whether it’s happy or something very sentimental … it’s about the music, or sometimes when chilies get in your eyes. It just seemed to be the right title to express the emotion, and that light is what carries us forth, and that light is what enables us as photographers to create. It’s just been wonderful.”
Recently, Running returned to Casas Grandes, excited to continue exploring the culture, people and land of her adopted home. Her work from this series continues to receive accolades: several images are featured in the Museum of Northern Arizona’s “Trappings of the American West” show through Jan. 6, 2008, and will also be shown at a photography event in New York City as a winner in the Photo District News Digital Imaging Contest.
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